July 27, 2018

I MISSED THIS: Greenwald on MSNBC this month smeared Malcolm Nance!

"[Nances’] background is quite sketchy but [he] is presented by the cable network (and now by NBC News) as an “intelligence expert” and former intelligence officer for the U.S. Navy."

“Sketchy” background? Is Greenwald implying that Nance isn’t an “intelligence expert” or even a “former intelligence officer” for the Navy? Greenwald can take that innuendo and shove it right in his ear. Here’s Nance’s thumbnail bio, sourced from Wikipedia:

He graduated from college with a degree in Arabic. Obviously he knows more about Arabic cultures than, say, Glenn Greenwald.
He is a decorated Naval veteran with 20 years of service, "was involved in numerous counter-terrorism, intelligence, and combat operations ... garnered expertise within the fields of intelligence and counterterrorism [and was] an instructor in wartime and peacetime Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE), training Navy and Marine Corps pilots and aircrew how to survive as a prisoner of war."
Nance helped create the Navy's Advanced Terrorism, Abduction and Hostage Survival course of instruction. Think he knows something about terrorism, intelligence and counter-intelligence?
But wait, there's more. After retiring honorably from the Navy in 2001, he founded a private intelligence support company, Special Readiness Services International (SRSI). He was a first responder to the American Airlines Flight 77 strike on the Pentagon on 9/11. He was "an intelligence and security contractor in Iraq, Afghanistan, the UAE and North Africa."

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/7/8/1778987/-Greenwald-Smears-Nance-MSNBC-Dems-to-Stand-Up-For-Russia-Stein

July 25, 2018

"TODDLE" is Ageism

do I need to post videos of multiple incidents of your favorite democrat repeatedly falling & stumbling to make my point?

tod·dle
ˈtädl
verb
1.
(of a young child) move with short unsteady steps while learning to walk.
"William toddled curiously toward the TV crew"
synonyms: totter, teeter, wobble, falter, waddle, stumble
"the child toddled toward him"

age·ism
ˈājˌizəm
noun
prejudice or discrimination on the basis of a person's age

Ageism is stereotyping of and discrimination against individuals or groups on the basis of their age. This may be casual or systematic.

July 22, 2018

The Sorites paradox (Trump's news cycle)

How many times have you heard someone say:

"Every day I say to myself that I never thought that I would say...that the President has gotten lower than he was when he ____________".

We say this because we are trapped in Trump's news cycle. This daily barrage of news that nobody ever expects to hear, combined with gaslighting, is how Trump conditions his base to accept the unacceptable. After being reconditioned, their natural reaction to people who point this out to them is to claim the person speaking truthfully is hysterical.

Gaslighting is the systematic attempt to destroy another's perception of reality and originated from a 1938 stage play, "Gas Light" called "Angel Street" in the US. Sociopaths and narcissists frequently use gaslighting tactics. Sociopaths consistently transgress social mores, break laws, and exploit others, but typically also are convincing liars, sometimes charming ones, who consistently deny wrongdoing.

Trump gets his supporters to voluntarily surrender their moral courage every time they accept "something lower". They are moved to surrender and rationalize their previous moral stance when instilled with shame, guilt, fear, or doubt.

The Sorites paradox is informally known as the "boiling frog" metaphor and best be visually shown using a color gradient composed of discrete color bands that such that two adjacent bands vary in color too little for human eyesight to be able to distinguish between them.



The Sorites paradox is also called the paradox of the heap. Picture a heap of sand, from which grains are individually removed. Under the assumption that removing a single grain does not turn a heap into a non-heap, the paradox is to consider is what happens when the process is repeated enough times: is a single remaining grain still a heap? If not, when did it change from a heap to a non-heap?

When did it become OK for a US President to get daily orders from TASS because he met privately with the Russian president so that the US can't deny what TASS says Trump agreed to?

The correct answer is that it never has and never will. Just because some say it is, or at best mutely accept it, doesn't matter in the slightest.

The best defense for us is to first recognize what Trump is doing and then become and remain defiant. Accept that every day Trump will be worse than before and keep fighting.


Thanks Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox

July 21, 2018

This makes me tear up, just stumbled across it

July 14, 2018

Green Day's American Idiot back in the Top 40 as President Trump visits UK

Source: Official Charts

A campaign to get Green Day's American Idiot to Number 1 on the Official Singles Chart as President Donald Trump visits the UK has seen the political hit return to the Top 40 for the first time in 14 years.

American Idiot was a re-entry at Number 25 when the final chart was announced this Friday 13. The song was the second most-downloaded track of the week, behind Number 1 Three Lions -- another vintage song. from 7pm

Read more: http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/green-days-american-idiot-back-in-the-top-40-as-president-trump-visits-uk__23386/

---

It is Currently at Number 2 on downloads!

http://www.officialcharts.com/charts/singles-chart/




(Unbleeped Version)


Full Album is Free on Amazon Prime
https://www.amazon.com/American-Idiot-Explicit-Green-Day/dp/B0011Z10PC/

July 7, 2018

The single major reason I do Not drive after dark in Minnesota...

A deputy in Isanti County, MN, was responding to a report about a man with a gun at a restaurant in the early hours of last Saturday morning, reports local outlet Isanti County News. He was traveling down a dark road in the squad car with the lights and sirens on at 114 mph when, suddenly, a deer leapt out from the side of the road. There was no time to stop.

(meanwhile in neighboring Wisconsin there are 20,000 deer to vehicle collisions annually)

https://jalopnik.com/under-no-circumstances-is-watching-this-cop-car-hit-a-d-1819920472

July 7, 2018

Family Farmers and & Rural Small Businesses (FFSB's) Have Their Game Faces on But,

FFSB's Need to Be Terrified, Here's Why Trump's Trade War is Targeted AT Them Not For Them:

• No matter how trade war ends, Trump wins & will declare victory even if FFSB's lose
• If trade war ends badly Trump will blame it on the usual
• Trump is doing nothing additional to help FFSB's
• China & World won't hesitate to help their FFSB's
• China & World will have plenty of cash after trade war ends
• FFSB's won't have much left in cash after trade war ends
• Tax cuts are primarily helping the <1% not FFSB's
• Tax cuts are driving up interest rates and hurting FFSB's that borrow to survive the war
• Trump's billionaire US friends are flush with cash from tax cuts
• Trump's billionaire overseas friends always want to hide their assets in the US
• Trump's billionaire friends can't wait to buy up US assets cheap from failing FFSB's
• Trump's billionaire friends can't wait to grab up market share from failing FFSB's
• Trump has bragged loudly about how he loves crashes, (remember?) so he can buy cheap
• Trump isn't blowing a dog whistle for the <1%, he's blowing a fog horn
• The more red meat he tosses on the picnic table in the front yard the hotter the fire is burning down the barns and shops
• FFSB's be Terrified, blaming Democrats & impeachment proceedings for your losses won't save you when it's too late

edit - forgot to add this from Joy Reid covering Rachel Maddow this evening:

Tariffs that kick in Friday will be a body blow to heartland states that helped put Trump in office, testing their faith in the president's brand of negotiation.

COMSTOCK PARK, Mich. — They voted overwhelmingly for President Donald Trump, but generations of red-state farmers are bracing for impact on Friday with the knowledge that his trade war could destroy their livelihood — and alter the agricultural map forever.

Tariffs levied by America's trading partners, such as China, kick in on Friday as retaliation for Trump's heavy taxation of their imports. Farmers in the heartland say that a drawn-out trade war could lead to more farms going bankrupt or selling out.

"The banks are not going to keep writing checks to save your farm," Matt Thiede, chief operating officer of Heeren brothers, a produce packing company in Comstock Park, Michigan, told NBC News. "For some family farms, one season could be the death of them."

"You will see a serious change in the landscape and topography of agriculture in the U.S.," he warned.

Betting the farm: Why the heartland still believes in Trump despite plunging prices
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/betting-farm-why-heartland-still-believes-trump-despite-plunging-prices-n886941?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma